Report: Almost three quarters of UK businesses have no formal BYOD policy or support structure

UK businesses are failing to realise basic security standards with 73 per cent lacking a formal BYOD policy, according to a new report.

The European-wide mobile usage research from Accellion revealed that the lack of secure mobile functions is causing business users to seek their own unregulated solutions.

"Despite months of headlines related to the NSA PRISM program, businesses are operating a laissez faire approach to the security of their data in the cloud," said Paul Steiner, Managing Director, Europe, Middle East & Africa at Accellion.

"Dealing with the whirlwind pace of mobile innovation is not just a security challenge for IT, it demands board-level scrutiny. Employees are now savvy enough technologically to seek out their own solutions, but then businesses must deal with the fallout when these solutions cause security breaches."

The report also revealed that one third of the companies surveyed currently fail to provide an approved secure file sharing service to employees, whilst 22 per cent of UK businesses actually encourage users to use ad-hoc solutions such as Dropbox despite the known security risks.

Such a trend is likely to not only redefine business connectivity but also cause significant concerns for employers. Juniper's report claimed that businesses will need to "mitigate the challenges and the risks of managing a multi-platform environment" if they want to protect against potential security risks.